40 Years of Widowhood

After a brief and tragic marriage in her early teens - he had run off with a perfume salesgirl from Halifax not two months after the ceremony - Aunt Tess had placed the usual "Having left my bed and board..." ad in the mainland paper and gone about her business.  In time, she came to be known as a widow and widowhood being less a subject for gossip than divorce, she allowed the minor misunderstanding to stand.  

She could've remarried, of course, she was young and strong, well kept and not bad to look at with a neat little house and five acres of land in her name.  There were plenty of young island men who took notice, several tried to court her over the years, but she kept them all at an amicable distance - now and again she would accompany one to the show or the dance, sometimes even go for Sunday drive or a lazy summer picnic - and while there might be a chaste kiss at the end of the evening, she always crossed the dark threshold alone.  It was somewhat remarkable that the island women, who might justifiably have viewed her as a rival if they were being kind or as a potential threat if they were not, were untroubled by her presence.  She maintained her friendships with them as easily as she maintained her solitude - with a smile and a kind word, a willingness to listen and help, a steady hand when needed.  She sat for the children, quilted with the sewing circle, sang in the choir, nursed the sick and the elderly and took in stray animals.  She didn't speak of the past or the future, as if one hadn't happened and the other might never come and when people wondered or mused if she was happy, she would give them a smile and a faraway look and say she was distracted and content.  This often made them frown but pressing her was futile.

You play the hand you're dealt, she would say and change the subject, It's all illusion anyway.

After 40 years of widowhood, you can get - as Nana put it - some set in your ways so it rocked the village when Tess announced she was to marry a retired fishing boat captain from Sandy Cove, a man we all knew by name but few had met, a man known to have the habit of drink, a card player and a womanizer.  

Lost her mind, she has, Aunt Pearl judged.

Too many years living alone, Aunt Vi agreed.

But Tess brushed the criticism and concern aside and married anyway.  In the space of a week, she'd sold the neat little house and five acres and gone to live on the mainland with her new husband, who it turned out,
drank nothing stronger than sweetened tea, played cribbage three times a week with his former shipmates, and had never womanized a day in his life.  A year or so later, he built her a small addition with a glassed in porch overlooking the ocean and she opened a small gift and collectible shop - the tourists passing through to the island and back again flocked to it - she served tea and sugar cookies in the afternoons and welcomed all who stopped while the captain smoked his pipe and entertained the children with stories of whales and great storms and little known equatorial islands with blue lagoons, coconut trees and friendly dragons - mostly made up, Tess would admit if she was pressed, the man was born to spin yarns and tell stories.

A match made in heaven, Aunt Pearl declared.

What a perfect ending, Aunt Vi agreed.

Every illusion has its real side and every real side its illusion.